‘Wow,’ said Annie, on seeing the grand feature. She gagged and pulled her rollneck jumper up over her mouth. ‘The smell! What is it? It reminds me of the recycling centre on a hot day.’
Joe grinned. ‘It’s at times like these that I definitely don’t miss my sense of smell.’
Their feet tapped on the stone floor as they proceeded towards the source of the strange odour, and the sound echoed loudly. Despite the smell Charley found herself swallowing deep breaths to fight off a sudden feeling of nausea. The smell was not only putrid, but the atmosphere was heavy, as if all the energy had been drained from it, leaving behind a bitter taste of… what? Hate, anger, death? Again, Charley checked her emotions.
Joe removed the plans for the original building from a pocket inside his jacket, and studied them closely.
‘Could I have a copy of those by any chance?’ Charley asked, grateful for the distraction.
Joe nodded. ‘Aye, ’course, I’ve got some in the cabin, outside. I’ll grab you a copy when we’ve finished here.’
Annie was preoccupied surveying the room. She came to a stop at the fireplace. ‘Can you just imagine the heat that it gave off? Look at the size of it.’
‘Hot enough to burn anything, and everything in them days, but that’s another story.’ Joe stepped to the back of the fireplace, and squatted on his heels. ‘It’s quite valuable, given its age. We were trying to figure out a way of taking it out without damaging it when we found the corpse.’
‘So, where is it?’ Annie asked.
The two detectives watched and waited in anticipation of seeing the final resting place of the decaying body. Joe pointed to the stone to the side of him.
‘Well, if you look closely, there is a lack of mortar surrounding this particular slab of stone. This suggested to me that it’s removable, and since I’m wondering about that, I’m also thinking that if there was a big fire roaring away in here the concealed opening, that led to who knows what could be hidden by a roaring fire in this old grate,’ he stopped to steady himself by putting his hand on the iron basket. It was a good job he did, for in the next moment there came a blast of wind down the chimney and he rocked precariously back on his heels. A shower of soot floated down, blackening Joe and the floor surrounding him. Using his sleeve to wipe the coal dust from his face, he held his breath. After a moment or two he looked tentatively up the chimney, but no more black powder was forthcoming. Unfazed, Joe continued. ‘Finn and I decided to take a jemmy to the stone. It wasn’t easy to open, let me tell you, given its size.’
Joe grunted with the effort, but he sought shallow fingerholds around the edge of the big piece of stonework at the back of the fire. As Joe cursed, the stone shifted slowly, eventually exposing a sort of doorway in the fireplace, just as Joe had suggested. As Joe worked away at the stone, the feeling came to Charley of something searching for a way to escape, after the torment of being trapped within. She shivered.
Sticking her neck out to peer into the black abyss, Annie had an idea. ‘Maybe it’s an old priest hole, and the priest got forgotten about?’
‘What makes you think that?’ asked Charley.
‘I went to a convent school, remember?’ Annie nodded towards the window. ‘The church on the opposite side of the road, it’s the nearest building, isn’t it? Churches have long been known to have tunnels to connect them to another building, haven’t they?’ A smile crossed her face. ‘A priest hole is nothing more than a modern-day panic room really, isn’t it?’
‘A lot less comfy though,’ said Charley.
The pair didn’t realise that Joe was listening to their conversation as his head was stuck inside the cavity, which he was searching with his head torchlight. He spoke up, ‘Don’t think so.’ His voice sounded strained, ‘this house was rebuilt on the site of a sixteenth-century farmhouse, around the time of the Industrial Revolution,’ he said. His body then disappeared further into the doorway and his boots could be heard making faint scraping sounds on the tunnel’s uneven surface as he inched himself forward in the darkness. There was a moment’s pause. His words sounded garbled and echoed in the enclosed space. ‘This tunnel – it appears to go on for ever. Your guess is as good as mine as to where it leads,’ he called out.
The two detectives looked at each other.
Joe appeared back at the opening of the cavern. He stretched out his hand and beckoned to them. Once they were directly behind him he pointed just inside the passageway. A metal bar attached to the stonework provided a simplified lock that, when dropped, would ensure that the door couldn’t be opened from outside.
‘Now, this suggests to me that there is another way out for whoever was coming to and fro, don’t you think?’
‘Maybe it was a servants’ passage?’ said Annie, in nothing more than a whisper. ‘They’re quite common in grand houses and palaces, I hear, to enable the servants to go about their duty undetected, without disturbing anyone or causing offence to the nobility.’
Joe shook his head. ‘The door to a servants’ passage wouldn’t likely be in the fireplace. It’s usually in a wall which is often covered in a highly patterned wallpaper so as to hide its position.’
‘Plus, the number of servants required in a house of this size would be minimal. They wouldn’t require servants’ passageways,’ replied Charley.
Joe scratched his head. ‘I’ve certainly never seen nowt like this ’afore.’
Joe stepped back inside the dining room, and offered Charley the chance to step forward. As she did so, cold air rushed towards her. Her blood chilled. Feeling aimless and adrift, she stumbled ahead. Placing her feet on the increasingly
